This blog exists to tell a particular story. This story is mine, yes, but it is yours as well.

I long to understand how adversity affects us on a deeply fundamental level, for both good and ill. I’m firmly committed to helping others navigate this path, as the choices people make in response to adverse circumstances often dramatically impacts the direction of their lives.

I am also a dreamer, am inquisitor, a man of faith but deeply skeptical. I am smart, but ignorant. I am a myriad of contradictions, but resoundly confident in my ability to communicate. This used to cause me shame, as if there was something wrong with giving voice to the gnawing longings of our experience. That attitude was extraordinarily wasteful, and I have risen above it. I haven’t conquered it; to the contrary, it still scares me to speak my mind. But it is no longer an option to refuse. It is what I must do. This is my identity, whether I like it or not.

The Adversity Within is an examination of the fragility of the human condition. It is a series of essays speaking to the vagaries of life, the hauntings of the past, and the desired graces of the future.

It is, at its core, a home. A home where I invite you to enter into your pain, via my words, my stories, my research, and breathe deeply. I do not, and will not, ever claim to have the secret to dealing with life’s tribulations and horrific occurrences. Nor will I ever claim to be able to understand all of your personal struggles.

Sometimes I feel lost, as if traipsing through the snow in a confounding forest, its beauty so exquisite, yet destitute as well. This is the nature of adversity. It destroys, pillages, obfuscates, while also beckoning, pleading, and, in some cases, creating the conditions by which authentic, vulnerable transformation can be incited, with intention and purpose.

My strategic consulting aims to provide navigational tools, specific actions and an articulated philosophy to aid those beset by adversity, in the hope that they may find their path, not despite their suffering, but because of it.

Like all of you, I surmise, I desperately long for connection. I ache for relationship, I yearn for inner healing, and peace.

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve found a series of strategies that have come to help me tremendously in cultivating the kind of life I can be proud of, and which have allowed me to live with my pains and challenges with confidence and fortitude. As a result, I’ve built a life I’m proud of, and intentionally offering to those around me, on my own terms.

With that said, these strategies are not easy to implement, and must be practiced with focused consistency; daily, hourly, even moment to moment.

You’ll sometimes hear people say that writing has saved them. As trite as this may sound, I have found that writing has profoundly affected me. It has not saved me, but it has provided an alleviation of my petulance, an opening of grace. It has connected me with myself; my fractured, insolent, magnificent self, and woven a filter of heaven through my being.

Though I have come to realize that this experience would not be particularly fulfilling if it was not shared—if it was not offered—to the world at large. Part of me does not want to do this; to hide behind the veil of my apathy and fear, but this is not acceptable. I will fight for what I believe in. I will do so with love, with the lessons of my fractured experience, and with the gifts of my inner resolve.

Above all else, I aim to speak to you, deeply, in a spirit of acceptance and love. What you are experiencing is part of the essence of the human condition. If you are in pain—if you are isolated, downtrodden, melancholy, know that you are not alone, and all is not lost.

Join with me. Not to start a movement, for that is not my goal. Connection is.

Thus I welcome you, with a deep sense of sincerity and gratitude. Please contact me anytime, share with me, and most importantly, share with one another.

After all, in our adversity, pain, grief, loneliness, and trauma, we are feeling. We remember our grief vividly, as if the memory itself is etched into our soul and body. The protrusions of tension in our muscles. The stifling pain in our nerves. The brittle feeling in our bones. And the arresting delicacy of our subconscious; seemingly aware and unaware of what is inside of us.

Anyone who has undergone a period of devastation knows exactly what I’m talking about. These feelings and experiences are universal. They cannot be defeated, nor can they be run from perpetually, no matter how much we may wish they could be.

The walls always come crashing down. Always.

That is why we need each other. Why we need to listen, to become actively vulnerable, to show of ourselves that which is not permitted even within ourselves.

We must expose the wounds, and allow them to speak. For me, they are given voice largely through writing. Writing has a way of navigating the caverns of our deepest aches, our most conspicuous sorrows.

Collectively, we expose these wounds through cultivating a sense of tenderness, focused determination, and dogged resilience.

Most importantly, we do this with each other.

Adversity experienced in any form is painful. Adversity experienced alone is devastating.

Therefore I present this blog to you as an offering, and as a place where we may connect, encourage one another, hold each other accountable, and navigate the adversities of life with confidence and determination.

I don’t have all the answers, and I never will. But if my writing speaks to you, if it plants a seed of hope, a foundation of understanding, a twinge of wisdom or insight, or if it gives a voice to the suffering you are experiencing right now, I am, and will continue to be, deeply honored.

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